by Neil Gaiman
The bed jiggled as something jumped up onto it, and I bolted upright, simultaneously aggravating my injuries and startling the hell out of a cat.
“Right, cat . . . Mr. Dimas has a cat,” I mumbled, staring at the creature hunched down near my feet. It was an orange tabby whose name I didn’t remember, but I recalled him using the cat’s habit of bringing in dead mice and birds as a parallel lesson for something or other in his class.
I took a deep breath and looked out the window. No sign of sunlight anywhere. I pushed myself out of bed, testing my balance and the general functionality of all my limbs. I was incredibly sore (and luckily, I now knew where the aspirin were), but I could move. I’d had a plan before I even got to Mr. Dimas’s, and now that I was in slightly better shape, I could get started. It was time to go collect my first recruit.
I know I’d promised, but I really didn’t have a choice. Mr. Dimas would try to convince me to stay, and it was better for everyone if I didn’t.
Still, there was something I had to do before I left.
Since I was staying in a teacher’s house, it wasn’t hard to find paper and a pencil. The cat followed me around as I put my socks and shoes back on, and he purred and nuzzled against my hand as I tried to gather my things. I couldn’t help but smile. I’d always liked animals, and the cat reminded me of Hue. Sometimes when the mudluff wanted attention, he’d just get in the way of whatever I was doing.
I had two letters to write. The most important one was also the hardest, so I put it off until last. Instead, leaning against a desk with the cat winding itself around my ankles, I wrote:
Mr. Dimas (Jack),
Sorry to run out like this, but you had to have expected I would. I know I promised, but it’s safer for you and my family if I’m not on this world anymore. Speaking of my family, the other letter here is for them. Please make sure they get it.
Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, first and foremost not assuming I was crazy when I brought you this whole harebrained tale. The supplies will help immensely, and I’m sure I won’t be the only one who’ll be grateful for them.
Not much else to say. I know it sounds (again) crazy, but if the world is ever destroyed, you’ll know I’ve failed in my mission. I’ll do the best I can to make sure I don’t.
Thanks again.
I debated for a few moments on signing my name—it could be seen as incriminating, but Mr. Dimas was smart enough to burn the letter after he’d read it. Still, I decided not to chance it. He’d know who it was from.
I made my way silently out to the living room, grabbing the rust-red backpack he’d filled with granola bars, bottled water, and medical supplies for me. Another thing I was grateful for, particularly the aspirin. I stopped long enough to take two of those, then slipped soundlessly out through one of the windows so I wouldn’t leave his front door unlocked. It seemed the least I could do.
The cat sat on the windowsill, watching as I made my way alone down the dark street.
The park was the best place to Walk from. It had a lot of wide-open space but enough trees that I could easily slip into a ring of them and not get caught disappearing—or reappearing, as the case may be. Many of my InterWorld lessons had explained that I had an instinctive navigational system for Walking, sort of like when you close your eyes and can still tell you’re about to run into a wall. The chance of trying to Walk between dimensions and ending up occupying the same space as a car or trash can—or another person—was slim to none, but Walking in a wide-open space made it far less likely.
There was no moon tonight, though there were a few scattered streetlights. It was light enough to see, but dark enough that someone would have to get fairly close to recognize me. Unfortunately, since Greenville is a small town, any local police officers passing by might decide to stop and ask what I was doing out here at this time of night. I avoided the few cars on the road just in case. Finally, I stood in the park, breathing deeply. I wanted to smell what my old life had been like one last time.
Greenville is close to a huge river, and there was always mist in the early morning, even during the summer. It always smelled like wet grass and damp asphalt at night. There was the faintest hint of gasoline from the station down the street and the warm, sweet smell of the doughnut shop in the opposite direction. The shop opened at five A.M., so the owner, Mr. Lee, started baking at around three. The doughnuts were almost always gone by 7:30, but if you stopped by on the way to school and he had one left, he’d give it to you for free.
I breathed carefully in and carefully out, committing everything to memory once again. Then I Walked, whispering a quiet good-bye to that sleepy little town.
Walking between dimensions, once you get used to it, is like walking normally—except easier, if that makes sense. Better. It feels right, like a good, satisfying stretch. It feels like doing what you were born to do.
I felt cold mist on my skin and heard a few tinkling notes, like from a music box. Random sensations are common when Walking, since you have to pass through the In-Between in order to get anywhere, and the In-Between is . . . well, it’s pretty much everything. At once. It’s the place we pass through when we Walk, sort of like its own pocket dimension. Or, more accurately, the dimension between all dimensions.
The park was spread out before me, looking almost the same as it had a moment ago. There was a tree about a hundred yards in front of me that hadn’t been there before, but that was the only notable difference, at least at first. I started moving through the park, glancing around with fascination as the tiny changes became more noticeable.
I didn’t smell the doughnut shop anymore; instead, the scent of freshly brewed coffee wafted over me from a twenty-four-hour diner across the street. I had to admit I was jealous. My Greenville didn’t have a twenty-four-hour anything.
I walked to the corner, crossing the street at the protected crosswalk. The little light-up man was blue, not white as I was used to. I’d missed that the last time I’d been here. I passed by a McDonald’s with arches that were green instead of yellow. I had to smile; that was the first thing I’d noticed when I wound up in this version of my town.
I hurried as I went down my street. My injuries weren’t bothering me as much as they had been (aspirin for the win!), and I needed to get this done as quickly as possible. The first time I’d come here, I’d run into the first other version of me I’d ever met. A girl. Josephine.
I remembered her name like I remembered my own, because in a way, it sort of was. I’d gone into my house, lost and confused, and there she’d been. She’d lived in my house with my mom, who’d looked at me like she’d never seen me before and called her daughter Josephine. Her daughter, not her son. A female version of me, living a life parallel to mine.
She would be my first recruit.
I was about halfway to my house when I stopped to cast out for her. We can sense each other, sort of, like when you’re alone in a room but you can tell when someone walks in without turning around. I paused for a second and closed my eyes, expanding my senses, and that’s probably what saved my life.
They’d been waiting for me.
I threw myself to the side as a netlike thing hurtled over where I’d been standing. They started to come up out of the shadows, or maybe they were the shadows themselves. It was hard to tell. All I knew for sure was that they were agents of HEX, and they had found me.
There were maybe four or five of them. I was trained in thirteen different styles of martial arts, and immediately recognized six nearby objects that could be used as improvised weapons.
I also had no defensive gadgets on me whatsoever, and I was injured in five different places. Not to mention these were HEX agents, not Binary. The Binary at least were predictable; they had their plasma guns, their sheer numbers and one-shot shields, their grav disks. Basic stuff. HEX agents? Those were unpredictable. I’d taken three different Magic Study courses on InterWorld Prime, and I probably knew about a quarter of what they could do.
I was more than a little outgunned.
They were slowly surrounding me, moving like liquid, fanning out in a semicircle. The moonless night and scattered streetlamps made some of them all but invisible in the dark. I did the sensible thing: I ran.
Well, I Walked.
I heard the music box again and a sound like bowling pins toppling over. I smelled something salty and saw a splash of bright pink as I slipped through the In-Between and into yet another version of Greenville.
The street was empty again, but I kept moving anyway, back the way I had come. There was no point in going to Josephine’s house, not in that dimension and not in this one. I couldn’t sense another version of me here; I didn’t know if that was because that version had died, or been captured by Binary or HEX, or if this was the home world of one of my fellow students back on Base. I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it.
When I’d expanded my senses to look for Josephine, right before I’d felt HEX’s attack, I’d felt her—and she hadn’t been home.
What was a version of me, not even seventeen years old, doing away from home at three A.M.? It wasn’t like Greenville had an active nightlife (although I suppose this one had a twenty-four-hour diner, at least . . . ) and I had never been the most popular of kids. I certainly hadn’t been cool enough to hang out with anyone who’d stay out all night. Maybe this version of me was different, but I doubted it.
I kept moving, occasionally hopping into a different dimension to throw off any pursuers. When I’d first started Walking, I’d done it instinctively—and, apparently, badly. One of my teachers had explained that I’d basically punched a hole in the wall instead of finding the door. I’d gotten better at it since then, and it was easier to slip between the worlds without causing as many ripples. I could Walk as many times as there was a portal around; HEX and Binary were operating on borrowed power, so my hope was that being a moving target would discourage them from chasing me too far.
I eventually made my way back to Josephine’s Greenville, a few blocks over from where I’d started. The HEX agents didn’t seem to be following me anymore; I couldn’t sense them when I tried.
I could sense her. She was a couple of streets over from where I was now, out of the residential area. I could see the brighter lights of the business district off in the distance, which was definitely where the familiar tug was leading me.
I sighed. Nothing was ever easy. . . .
With my senses on high alert and my ribs aching again from all the movement, I started down the street.
It didn’t take me long to track her down, though I was still at a loss as to why she was apparently in an abandoned office building. The hair on the back of my neck was standing on end. The last time I’d been in a place like this, I had found Joaquim, the Walker who’d turned out to not be a Walker at all, who’d betrayed my team and caused Jerzy’s death. He’d been pretending to be a captive of Binary so we’d “rescue” him. . . . Had Josephine been taken captive, too?
It was seeming more and more likely. The HEX scouts outside her house . . . maybe they hadn’t been waiting for me, after all. Maybe they had found her.
This was bad. I was still running on borrowed time, dealing with several injuries, and had no weapons. I had no one I could call for backup. Josephine was supposed to become my backup.
The smart thing to do would be to cut my losses and go—head to another version of Greenville and find another me. Like I said, as long as there were portals, I never had to stop Walking. I could go anywhere I wanted, as long as I got there before FrostNight destroyed everything. . . .
I was berating myself for not ever being able to do the smart thing as I picked the lock on the abandoned building.
See, when HEX and Binary capture a Walker, they don’t just kill them. They use them. I’d explained that to Mr. Dimas, but I hadn’t explained how. HEX boils us down, literally puts us in a giant cauldron, still alive and screaming, and boils us like lobsters. Down past the skin and bones, to our very essence. Then they put that essence in a jar and cast some kind of spell on it and use it whenever they need to Walk. And that’s not the worst part, no way.
The worst part is, in some small way, we’re still alive. Still aware. And we know what’s been done to us and what we’re being used for.
I’d rather die right now—rather let all the worlds be destroyed—than allow that to happen to even one more of us.
I stepped through the door, stopping to let my eyes adjust. It had been dark outside, but it was darker in here; the only light that found its way in was through the windows, and most of those were covered with signs saying RENT THIS SPACE.
The floor was marble, one of those nice-looking entryways that made you forget you were probably here to see a therapist or dentist. There were doors on either side of me, both closed and sporting tinted-glass windows, and the lobby stretched out into darkness ahead of me.
Everything was silent as I moved, walking carefully across the pristine floor. I listened hard, alert for any sign that I wasn’t alone, and a subtle change in air pressure warned me a second before I heard a distinct click behind me.
I whirled, going immediately into a crouch, only to discover the figure behind me doing the same.
“Don’t move,” she hissed, and in her hands was a gun. It was pointed directly at me.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
NOW, I’D SEEN ALL kinds of guns since I started training at InterWorld, from all worlds and times. Blasters, emitters, ray guns, laser guns with detachable Bluetooth scopes, plasma guns, you name it. This was a modern handgun, a Colt .45. Basic, easy, and still able to kill me twice before I hit the ground.
“Whoa,” I said, holding my hands out in front of me.
“Don’t move,” she repeated. The gun was leveled at me unwaveringly, and from the look of the face behind it, this wouldn’t be its maiden voyage. I wondered if that’s how I looked in my weapons training classes. I imagined it wasn’t far off, since we shared the same face.
“Josephine,” I said, trying to make my voice as soothing as possible. “It’s okay. My name is Joe, I’m—”
My words didn’t have the calming effect I was hoping for. “It’s you,” she snarled, and her hands began to shake. “You’re the one who was in my house that day!”
“Yes,” I said, but didn’t get any further. She started to stand. So did I, but she gestured me back down with an angry jerk of the gun.
“You ruined my life,” she spat, edging closer. I was well versed enough in weapons to know what a bullet from that gun would do to my head if she fired. She was still shaking, though it was obviously from anger rather than fear.
“You don’t want to fire that,” I said, trying to be reasonable. I hoped she couldn’t hear the panic that was threatening to shatter my calm. “The police station isn’t too far from here, they’ll hear the shots.” That was a guess, actually; I remembered that the police station was on a street of the same name as this one, but I had no idea how close or far it was from here.
“I don’t care,” she said, standing just out of my reach. She was about my height, dressed in loose jeans and a baggy hoodie, both of which looked like they’d seen better days. Her frizzy red hair was short, barely brushing her cheeks, and looked like it hadn’t been brushed in a while. Despite the baggy clothes, I could see that she was thinner than was healthy. All this added up to a desperation that made me believe her next words. “It’ll be worth it. Even if I go to jail, it’ll be worth it. They’ll finally stop coming after me.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that if she killed me, it wouldn’t matter if she went to jail or not; she’d likely be dead either way when FrostNight destroyed everything. There was something else I could use to make a far better point.
“No, they won’t. They aren’t after me! Well, they aren’t just after me. They
’re after you.” The pieces had all fallen together. The HEX agents outside her house had been waiting for her to come home. The bad guys had found her because I’d Walked there unknowingly. I’d led them to her.
Simply put, I had ruined her life.
“Shut up! You’re lying. Why would they be after me? They started coming after you showed up in my house that day. They must be after you!”
“They were, but now they’re after us. You have to trust me. Look, look at me! We could be twins!”
“You’re just one of them, trying to . . . to do whatever weird magic crap they do, to take my place!”
“No, Josephine, listen!” I told her my full name, my birthday, my mother’s and father’s names and birthdays. I told her where I went to elementary school and what my favorite dessert was. From the look on her face, I could tell everything I said was true for her, too. “If I was trying to take your place, first of all why would I be a boy, and second, why wouldn’t I be living your life right now? You’re obviously not. You haven’t even been home, have you?”
“Not in months,” she admitted, though the gun was still pointed at me.
“So why would I come find you?”
“To lead them to me,” she said, but she sounded less certain.
“No,” I said, as forcefully as I dared. “I’m trying to help you. I am you, you from a different world. And you are me, from this world.”
“And those things?” she asked.
“Those are the bad guys,” I said. “I know it’s a simple explanation, but we don’t have time to get into it. I promise I’ll explain on the way, but we can’t stay here. They can sense us, and they’ll find us eventually. You have to trust me.”
She just looked at me, indecision plain on her face. I could almost read every thought as it went through her mind; after all, I knew what I’d be thinking, if I were in her shoes. I knew what I had thought, when all of this had first happened to me.
